Research On Antiphon’s Court Speech And Athens Judicial Litigation

In the fifth century BC,with the victory of the Greco-Persian Wars,Greek history entered the Golden Age,and oratory became popular and flourished.Oratory is an important tradition of the ancient Greeks,and the flourishing of oratory is the product of the democratic system of the Greek city-states,while the democracy of Athens pushed the ancient Greek oratory to its brilliant peak.There were many orators in classical Greece,and Antiphon was one of the top ten orators.He was the first person to write court speeches,and he was a pioneer in the field of speech writing.Between the 5th and 4th centuries BC,there were a number of orators named Antiphon,and the identity of Antiphon has been debated in western academic circles due to the different styles of surviving works named after Antiphon.This paper does not comment on the identity of Antiphon,except to study the politician who led the oligarchic coup in 411 BC and the pioneer of court oratory writing,and ascribe the three groups of “The Tetralogies” to his work.Starting with the establishment and litigation procedure of the jury court in Athens,this paper analyzes the argumentative skills used in Antiphon’s relatively complete“Prosecution of the Stepmother for Poisoning” “On the Murder of Herodes” “On the Choreutes” and three groups of “The Tetralogies”.To explore the impact of court speeches on judicial proceedings in Athens.On the basis of the general situation of the jury court in Athens and the court proceedings in Athens in the classical period,the first part analyzes the reasons why Antiphon wrote court speeches and the ways in which Antiphon taught the common people the oratory skills.Antiphon made a lot of money from ghostwriting court speeches and teaching court speaking skills.After Antiphon,more knowledgeable and capable people followed his example,and the Athenian writing of litigations developed rapidly after Antiphon,and formed a group of professional speechwriters in the 4th century BC.The second part analyzes Antiphon’s debating skills.In the existing relatively complete “Prosecution of the Stepmother for Poisoning” “On the Murder of Herodes” “On the Choreutes” and three groups of “The Tetralogies”,Antiphon mainly used five kinds of argument skills,respectively: State their own misfortune and win the sympathy of the jury;State the contributions made by oneself or his ancestors to the city-state;Attack the other person;Implore jurors to be careful by citing similar cases;Emphasis on divine guidance and praise of jurors.The third part mainly analyzes the influence of Antiphon’s court speech on the Athenian judicial proceedings.Based on the above analysis of the argumentation skills in Antiphon’s court speeches,this paper explores the influence of the application of argumentation skills on jurors,and sorts out the practical significance and limitations of court speeches in the practice of judicial proceedings in Athens.The application of court speech in Athenian judicial proceedings promoted the development of the writing of litigation speech,guaranteed the freedom of speech of Athenian citizens,and improved the judicial efficiency of the jury court,which encouraged citizens to make more contributions to the city to a certain extent and promoted the progress of Athenian judicial democracy.However,as a product of direct democracy,there are some limitations in the application of court speech in judicial proceedings,which are mainly reflected in the following aspects:first,the statements of both parties in court and the jurors’ judgment are subjective;Second,the use of court speech in judicial proceedings has a certain impact on the fairness of the court trial.Although the application of court speech has both advantages and disadvantages to the judicial proceedings in Athens,it is undeniable that the court speech is an important part of the judicial proceedings in Athens,which promotes the judicial democratic process in Athens to a certain extent and provides reference for the practice of the judicial proceedings in later generations.At the same time,the practice of court speech in ancient Greece and the emergence of the group of speech writers have made a significant contribution to promoting the process of judicial democracy in Greece.